absorption-barrier

Kinetic Barrier

What it is

A timer-triggered unique artifact. After avoiding damage for a tier-scaled window, the ship raises a kinetic barrier: a sustained multi-stat buff (movement speed plus luck) plus a one-shot kinetic shove that damages and knocks back nearby enemies on activation. The buff stays active until the ship is hit, at which point it is stripped and the arm timer restarts.

Identity

Field	Value
Display name	Kinetic Barrier
Category	unique
Damage tag	(none)
Icon	shield insignia
Primary color	ffdd44
Secondary color	cc9922
Bright color	ffee88
Proc audio cue	absorption-barrier charge-up / click / sparkle

Per-tier values

Arm time shortens with tier; speed bonus, luck bonus, shove damage, and shove radius all scale up. The values record also carries a damage bonus and absorb-hits count that are not consumed by the wired effects in this file.

Tier	Rarity	Arm window (s)	Speed bonus (+%)	Luck bonus (+)	Shove damage	Shove radius (px)
1	Uncommon	6	40	35	40	180
2	Rare	5	50	50	70	200
3	Epic	4	65	70	110	230
4	Legendary	3	90	100	165	260

The common tier (tier 0) reuses the uncommon values record; differentiation at common is supplied by the shared flat passive bonus, not this table.

Two extra fields on every tier are not read by the activate or break effects defined on this artifact:

Tier	Damage bonus (+)	Absorb hits
1	25	1
2	40	1
3	65	2
4	100	3

Effect

Two coupled effects run on the unified effect engine:

Phase	Trigger	What happens
Activate	Tier-dependent window elapsed without taking damage	Apply max-speed buff as a percent modifier, apply luck buff as a flat modifier, deal area damage centered on the ship, apply knockback inside the same radius, play burst-and-ring VFX, flash the artifact icon, show a banner, play the proc audio cue.
Break	Player takes damage while the buff is held	Strip all modifiers from this artifact. The arm timer then begins a fresh countdown of the same tier-dependent length.

The buff source is tagged so the break effect targets only this artifact’s contribution. Both stat modifications have no duration of their own — they persist indefinitely until cleared by the break trigger.

Knockback uses a fixed shove force of 70, scaled in reach by the tier-scaled shove radius. The proc audio cue is routed through the spatial world-event bus.

VFX details:

Parameter	Value
Type	burst-and-ring
Particle count	18
Scale	4.5
Lifetime (s)	0.40
Color	bright (#ffee88)

Stacking rules

• The buff source is tagged artifact:absorption_barrier. The break effect removes modifiers from that exact source, so taking a hit cleanly clears only this artifact’s contribution and leaves other artifacts’ buffs intact.
• Speed and luck modifiers have no duration on their own — they persist indefinitely until cleared by the break trigger.
• The arm window is reset by the player_damage signal; consecutive activations are impossible while the buff is already active because the break effect fires first.
• The shove pulse and knockback are one-shot per activation; they do not repeat while the buff is held.
• Tier scaling is monotone in arm time (shorter = better), speed bonus, luck bonus, shove damage, and shove radius.

EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the “timer-then-break” pattern (timer trigger paired with a signal-clear) is shared with Combat Stim; promote to a cross-cutting page on the artifacts index for the “stay clean” archetype.

EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the rule that multi-stat sustained-buff artifacts live in the mid-band shove-radius / modest-damage tier (180-260px) is a system-level convention worth surfacing on the artifacts overview rather than re-stating per entity.

EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the values record carries dmgBonus and absorbHits fields that no effect on this artifact reads. Either dead data or wiring debt — flag for source review.